What Now? What Next? How Hard it is to Person with People.

It’s been a long winter. So much has happened to our people, so much pain. It’s been there all along, of course, but it doesn’t change the shock of it when it rears up again. Each time. Each new shock.

I’ve gone back and forth between being zen, like, “we’re all dying anyway, no sense in worrying about my kids over all the other kids getting murdered. Statistics still favor survival,” to fully opening the door on the reality of how painful living is and how terrifying each day. Today, I am back to worrying, fretting, feeling powerless. Hearing the monster coming. The big mouth of humanity, eating the small and weak. Big, white, man hands, crushing, hiding, flattening any other creatures that try to speak. Us all supporting the incomplete, violent men in charge, who are used to being pet, bolstered, encouraged, done for, fed, and satisfied. We don’t ask questions, as that’s just the way it is. Has always been.

We are a brutal people. Glimpses of kindness and light here and there, but mostly, we are ego-driven brutes. Always have been. I hate it. We don’t even agree that it’s a bad thing to be a violent brute. That’s our country’s personality. Maybe the very nature of humans? And we celebrate it. We encourage its power, because it feels inevitable and known. We like the idea of having power over another life. With a gun. With a noose. With systemic control.

I have tried to just float on top of the tide. The stress, the unknowns of life. I’ve tried not to get sucked down in it, because I don’t want to be a bummer of a mom, or an employee, or a wife.

The dynamics of power witnessed in the world are seen in the house, too. And I worry. What voice am I allowed to have? Am I allowed to speak, even if it’s by yelling, or crying? Even if it’s in whispers? I don’t feel like anyone wants to listen, so I’m silent. I get the message. But it’s crushing to feel obsolete and like a shadow, a voice whispering to nothing, no one in the dark.

I’m trying to be chill about my future, my kids’ future, my family’s future. Trying to let today be the thing in front of me, not beyond that. It’s hard. Not just in whether we’ll make it to a future through the guns and the bombs, but whether we can make it there financially. It is stupid and cruel, for me, a vegan hippie who buys gelatin-free vitamins for her kids, worry about money, when people are without essential medicine, houses, clean water, or food. I’m sorry. This is why I should shut up. I know it. But here I am, worrying on page anyway.

Our business is going well. There is growth, and that is great, but there is so much personal and relationship cost. It is hard. And we only have ourselves, and that is a lot to put on one marriage. I feel the financial burden constantly, like I can never make enough to keep up. I feel like I’m failing everyone. It’s scary and lonely. I have tried to open myself to more intimacy and trust, more confidence and faith in my voice, but it’s burned, so I’m pulling it all back. I default to rock. If I’m not responsible and there to serve, people go without, and I can’t do that. My role, since birth, has been to be the accountable one, the supportive one, and asking for help is a burden on others I’m not allowed to drop.

So, I sit kind of silent, until it all comes out through my fingers. Sorry to use anyone who is reading this as my free therapy, but there it is.

The sunshine is coming back. Winter will end. That should help scare some of this darkness back into the corners. The rest of it, the how-to guide to human personing, I don’t know, man. Maybe the kids can help.